Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno from the Drug Policy Alliance discusses the bloody aftermath of cocaine trafficker Pablo Escobar’s death, the subject of her new book, There Are No Dead Here: A Story of Murder and Denial in Colombia.

Los Angeles, CA — A Los Angeles man has escaped serious charges after being exonerated by police body camera footage which showed officers planting a baggy of cocaine into his wallet. Thanks to a persistent local media station out of Los Angeles, this body camera footage was released publicly and played a major role in the charges being dropped against 52-year-old Ronald Shields.

Attorney Steve Levine said he believed that body camera footage from his client’s arrest shows LAPD officers planting drugs. He also noticed several inconsistencies in the video that contradict statements the officers made in their police reports. The footage stems from Shields’ arrest last year after he panicked at an accident scene and fled.

On Wednesday, the case came to an end as the charges of felony hit and run, being a felon in possession of a firearm, and drug possession were all dropped. Because he did admit to fleeing the scene of an accident, Shields pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor hit and run.

Levine told reporters that the body camera footage has a “very big bearing” on the outcome his client’s case. Indeed it did as Shields was facing the possibility of years in prison.

As TFTP previously reported, according to Levine, the body cameras can be turned on and off by officers, but the recording actually starts proactively and will pick up the 30 seconds of activity that takes place in front of the camera prior to it being turned on. Levine said that the drugs were planted in this 30-second timeframe when the officers did not know that they were being filmed.

Showing the video to CBS, Levine pointed out that a white square can be seen in the officer’s hand before one of the officers picks up a small bag of drugs off the ground. The video also shows the officer awkwardly moving around the suspect and bending down towards the area that the drugs were found just after fiddling around with the white square in his hand.

“There’s a little white square here in his hand. I believe the video shows the drugs were in his right hand and transfers to his left hand,” Levine said.

Furthermore, the officers testified that the bag of drugs was found in his left pocket, but the video shows it being found on the ground. Then the officers are seen taking the drugs off of the ground and placing them into his wallet, which is an obvious breach of protocol. Next, LAPD Officer Gaxiola is seen in the video carrying the wallet to several different officers telling them “He has a little bag of narco in here.”

The judge reportedly said on Thursday that he does not agree with Levine about the white square that can obviously be seen in the officer’s hand, but it is undeniable that the footage on the body camera contradicts the information that the officers provided in their police report.

“It certainly asked questions that need to be answered,” Police Chief Charlie Beck said soon after the video aired.

The LAPD responded to these revelations in a statement saying that they will be opening an internal investigation into the use and misuse of bodycams by officers on the street. That investigation is still currently open.

Naturally, the union-supplied attorney for the cops denies any wrongdoing by the officers.

“I don’t think there’s anything nefarious whatsoever,” Bill Seki, an attorney representing two of the officers said. “It wasn’t something that was being hidden.” However, the fact that the body camera wasn’t turned on until after the drugs were placed in Shields’ wallet, indicates otherwise.

The union described the release of the video as a “circus sideshow” and praised the officers in the video below.

If you think police officers planting evidence is some anomaly, think again.

After their department gained national shame in August over a video showing an officer planting drugs to frame an innocent man while his fellow cops watched, the Baltimore Police Department showed the world the dark reality that is framing people to make arrests. Only days after the first video was released, the Baltimore Public Defender’s office released a second video that allegedly “appears to depict multiple officers working together to manufacture evidence.”

It was then announced that nearly three dozen people will have their charges dropped after the video of Officer Richard Pinheiro showed him planting drugs while Officers Hovhannes Simonyan and Jamal Brunson stood by and did nothing. Naturally, the BPD claimed nothing unscrupulous was going in in the aforementioned videos.

It is not just Baltimore cops either—as TFTP previously reported, in one of the most shocking cases of badge abuse ever exposed, the Alabama Justice Project revealed that a ring of corrupt cops in the Dothan Police Department planted drugs and guns on hundreds of young black men for over a decade, in most cases resulting in their imprisonment. Their actions were aided by supervisors and covered up by the district attorney.

Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project, where this article first appeared. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Facebook.

A Columbia, MO man angrily confronted one of two police officers he said planted drugs on him. He recorded the confrontation and the charges were later dropped.

— Lawrence Lawhorn believes Columbia police officers Chris Papineau and Ryan Terranova planted methamphetamines in their patrol car during a recent arrest. They accused him of putting it there and charged him with possession of narcotics.

Lawhorn was under arrest for an unrelated incident but was not going to take the possession charges lying down.

Not content with waiting until his day in court to prove his innocence, Lawhorn confronted Papineau to his face in a Columbia parking lot. The entire confrontation was captured on video in what looks like a scene from HBO’s The Wire.

“You are crooked. You planted drugs on me,” Lawhorn told Papineau to his face. “I’m tired of you flagging us down, accusing us of being crooked,” the officer exclaimed. “I didn’t plant shit on you,” Papineau said.

“You did and I got the tape to prove it,” Lawhorn replied. The officer challenged that claim saying, “Go ahead and prove it.”

“You going down! That’s all there is to it,” an apparently angry Lawhorn exclaimed, adding, “the next time you get violent with a citizen, you’re going to be in trouble. He’s taping!” Lawhorn motioned to a friend who was recording nearby.

The officer, who arguably remained calm during the confrontation, told Lawhorn again he’s tired of the angry citizen questioning his integrity and honor. Lawhorn fired back, “You shouldn’t have planted the dope.”

Papineau even tried, apparently, to throw his fellow officer under the bus so to speak. He asked Lawhorn, “Who got you out of the car?” “Terranova,” replied Lawhorn. “Who found the dope?” the officer asked. “Terranova,” said Lawhorn. “So, why are you sitting here accusing me of anything?” Papineau asked.

“You want me to tell you why I’m accusing you of putting it there?” Lawhorn asked. “You told another officer that you did it. I got it on tape,” he said.

Lawhorn reminded Papineau he had been properly searched “for three and a half minutes” before being placed into the police cruiser. He also told the officer there was no way, humanly possible, he could have placed the drugs so far up under the seat, all the while handcuffed inside the cruiser. He also said his DNA should be on the bag of drugs.

Lawhorn continued screaming, at the top of his lungs, at Papineau. “Your ass is grass bro…you’re going down in a court of law man…you fucked your career up…you’re the dirtiest type of cop there is man…you’re trying to take me from my family…you’re going down for it. I will die making sure you go down for putting that dope on me.”

As if Lawhorn could get any angrier, he arguably lost it after Papineau told him, “Well, I’m not the one with a drug history.” That seemed to incense Lawhorn. “You stupid motherfucker! One! I don’t have a drug history!” Lawhorn exclaimed.

“Now research my background…You dumb motherfucker. You’re in the worst type of trouble in the world man…you are going down. You have fucked up your career. I promise you won’t serve in this city…you’re a corrupt cop. We paid you to protect and serve. You are wrong!” Lawhorn cried aloud.

“I’m not done until you are removed from your official capacity and are incarcerated,” he promised.

According to Citizens for Justice, the video spurned an internal investigation. Following the outcome of the investigation, Papineau and Terranova reportedly went to the prosecutor’s office and stated they believed they were in error and that the vehicle had not been properly searched prior to the arrest.

At the end of the video Columbia PD’s Internal Affairs Sergeant Brian Tate, whose voice is reportedly captured in a recording, can be heard confirming the two officers did, in fact, tell the prosecutor they had not properly searched the patrol car prior to putting Lawhorn inside. That statement led to all charges against Lawrence Lawhorn being subsequently dismissed.

The video was released following recent news, as TFTP reported, of at least one Baltimore police officer caught red handed planting drugs in a bottle in the backyard of someone’s home. Both videos will arguably provoke a larger discussion of the possibility some police officers will stop at nothing to get an arrest, even do the unthinkable and arrest innocent people for crimes they themselves committed.

Taken in a larger context, the video may serve to illustrate citizens do not have to take false allegations and false charges lying down. They have a right to fight back, although care must be taken in confronting any person who has a badge and a gun. To many, Lawhorn may go down in history as a champion for justice and bravery. We’re glad he didn’t just take it and roll over, hoping for the justice system to set him free as that almost never seems to happen.

“Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle — a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism. It is the aim of the Bill of Rights, if it has any remaining aim at all, to curb such prehensile gentry. Its function is to set a limitation upon their power to harry and oppress us to their own private profit.”

— H.L. Mencken

Let’s not mince words.

Jeff Sessions, the nation’s top law enforcement official, would not recognize the Constitution if he ran right smack into it.

Whether the head of the Trump Administration’s Justice Department enjoys being the architect of a police state or is just painfully, criminally clueless, Sessions has done a great job thus far of sidestepping the Constitution at every turn.

Most recently, under the guise of “fighting crime,” Sessions gave police the green light to rob, pilfer, steal, thieve, swipe, purloin, filch and liberate American taxpayers of even more of their hard-earned valuables (especially if it happens to be significant amounts of cash) using any means, fair or foul.

In this case, the foul method favored by Sessions & Co. is civil asset forfeiture, which allows police and prosecutors to “seize your car or other property, sell it and use the proceeds to fund agency budgets—all without so much as charging you with a crime.”

Under a federal equitable sharing program, police turn asset forfeiture cases over to federal agents who process seizures and then return 80% of the proceeds to the police. (In Michigan, police actually get to keep up to 100% of forfeited property.)

This incentive-driven excuse for stealing from the citizenry is more accurately referred to as “policing for profit” or “theft by cop.”

Despite the fact that 80 percent of these asset forfeiture cases result in no charge against the property owner, challenging these “takings” in court can cost the owner more than the value of the confiscated property itself. As a result, most property owners either give up the fight or chalk the confiscation up to government corruption, leaving the police and other government officials to reap the benefits.

And boy, do they reap the benefits.

Police agencies have used their ill-gotten gains “to buy guns, armored cars and electronic surveillance gear,” reportsThe Washington Post. “They have also spent money on luxury vehicles, travel and a clown named Sparkles.”

Incredibly, these asset forfeiture scams have become so profitable for the government that, according to The Washington Post, “in 2014, law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did.” As the Post notes, “the Treasury and Justice departments deposited more than $5 billion into their respective asset forfeiture funds. That same year, the FBI reports that burglary losses topped out at $3.5 billion.”

According to USA Today, “Anecdotal evidence suggests that allowing departments to keep forfeiture proceeds may tempt them to use the funds unwisely. For example, consider a 2015 scandal in Romulus, Michigan, where police officers used funds forfeited from illicit drug and prostitution stings to pay for … illicit drugs and prostitutes.”

Memo to the rest of my fellow indentured servants who are living through this dark era of government corruption, incompetence and general ineptitude: this is not how justice in America is supposed to work.

We are now ruled by a government so consumed with squeezing every last penny out of the population that they are completely unconcerned if essential freedoms are trampled in the process.

Our freedoms aren’t just being trampled, however. They’re being eviscerated.

At every turn, “We the People” are getting swindled, cheated, conned, robbed, raided, pickpocketed, mugged, deceived, defrauded, double-crossed and fleeced by governmental and corporate shareholders of the American police state out to make a profit at taxpayer expense.

Americans no longer have to be guilty to be stripped of their property, rights and liberties. All you have to be is in possession of something the government wants. And if you happen to have something the government wants badly enough, trust me, their agents will go to any lengths to get it.

If the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.

Here’s how the whole ugly business works in a nutshell.

First, government agents (usually the police) use a broad array of tactics to profile, identify, target and arrange to encounter (in a traffic stop, on a train, in an airport, in public, or on private property) those individuals who might be traveling with a significant amount of cash or possess property of value. Second, these government agents—empowered by the courts and the legislatures—seize private property (cash, jewelry, cars, homes and other valuables) they “suspect” may be connected to criminal activity.

Then—and here’s the kicker—whether or not any crime is actually proven to have taken place, without any charges being levied against the property owner, or any real due process afforded the unlucky victim, the property is seized by the government, which often divvies it up with the local police who helped with the initial seizure.

In a Kafkaesque turn of the screw, the burden of proof falls on the unfortunate citizenry who must mount a long, complicated, expensive legal campaign to prove their innocence in order to persuade the government that it should return the funds they stole. Not surprisingly, very few funds ever get returned.

It’s a new, twisted form of guilt by association, only it’s not the citizenry being accused of wrongdoing, just their money.

Motorists have been particularly vulnerable to this modern-day form of highway robbery.

For instance, police stole $201,000 in cash from Lisa Leonard because the money—which Leonard planned to use to buy a house for her son—was being transported on a public highway also used by drug traffickers. Despite the fact that Leonard was innocent of wrongdoing, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the theft on a technicality.

Police stole $50,000 in cash from Amanee Busbee—which she planned to use to complete the purchase of a restaurant—and threatened to hand her child over to CPS if she resisted. She’s one of the few to win most of her money back in court.

Police stole $8,500 in cash and jewelry from Roderick Daniels—which he planned to use to purchase a new car—and threatened him with jail and money-laundering charges if he didn’t sign a waiver forfeiting his property.

As the Huffington Postexplains, these police forfeiture operations have become little more than criminal shakedowns:

Police in some jurisdictions have run forfeiture operations that would be difficult to distinguish from criminal shakedowns. Police can pull motorists over, find some amount of cash or other property of value, claim some vague connection to illegal drug activity and then present the motorists with a choice: If they hand over the property, they can be on their way. Otherwise, they face arrest, seizure of property, a drug charge, a probable night in jail, the hassle of multiple return trips to the state or city where they were pulled over, and the cost of hiring a lawyer to fight both the seizure and the criminal charge. It isn’t hard to see why even an innocent motorist would opt to simply hand over the cash and move on.

Unsurprisingly, these asset forfeiture scams have become so profitable for the government that they have expanded their reach beyond the nation’s highways.

According to USA Today, the U.S. Department of Justice received $2.01 billion in forfeited items in 2013, and since 2008 local and state law enforcement nationwide has raked in some $3 billion in forfeitures through the federal “equitable sharing” program.

So now it’s not just drivers who have to worry about getting the shakedown.

Any American unwise enough to travel with cash is fair game for the government pickpockets.

In fact, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been colluding with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and local police departments to seize a small fortune in cash from American travelers using the very tools—scanners, spies and surveillance devices—they claimed were necessary to catch terrorists.

No, the government bureaucrats aren’t looking to catch criminals. (If so, they should be arresting themselves.)

They’re just out to rob you of your cold, hard cash.

Think about it for a moment. You pay a hefty fee just to be able to walk free. It’s called income tax. As former presidential candidate Ron Paul recognizes, “The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government.” And if you refuse to pay any of that so-called income tax, you’ll be severely fined and/or arrested and put in jail.

One more thing: you don’t really own your property. That is, your house or your land. Even when you pay off the mortgage, if you fail to pay your property taxes, government agents will evict you and take your home.

This is not freedom.

There was a time in our history when our forebears said “enough is enough” and stopped paying taxes (a pittance compared to what we are forced to shell out in taxes today) to what they considered an illegitimate government. They stood their ground and refused to support a system that was slowly choking out any attempts at self-governance, and which refused to be held accountable for its crimes against the people. Their resistance sowed the seeds for the revolution that would follow.

Unfortunately, in the 200-plus years since we established our own government, we’ve let the corporate elite and number-crunching bureaucrats pilfer our bank accounts to such an extent that we’re back where we started.

Once again, we’ve got a despotic regime with an imperial ruler doing as it pleases.

But what if we didn’t just pull out our pocketbooks and pony up to the federal government’s outrageous demands for more money? What if we didn’t just line up to drop our hard-earned dollars into the corporate collection bucket, no questions asked about how it will be spent? What if, instead of meekly tolerating the government’s ongoing efforts to rob us blind, we did something about it?

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if the government can just take from you what they want, when they want, and then use it however they want, you can’t claim to be anything more than a serf in a land they think of as theirs.

It’s up to “We the People” to demand reform.

These injustices will continue as long as we remain silent.

As American journalist H.L. Mencken observed:

The American of today, in fact, probably enjoys less personal liberty than any other man of Christendom, and even his political liberty is fast succumbing to the new dogma that certain theories of government are virtuous and lawful, and others abhorrent and felonious. Laws limiting the radius of his free activity multiply year by year: It is now practically impossible for him to exhibit anything describable as genuine individuality, either in action or in thought, without running afoul of some harsh and unintelligible penalty. It would surprise no impartial observer if … the goddess of liberty were taken off the silver dollars to make room for a bas-relief of a policeman in a spiked helmet. Moreover, this gradual (and, of late, rapidly progressive) decay of freedom goes almost without challenge; the American has grown so accustomed to the denial of his constitutional rights and to the minute regulation of his conduct by swarms of spies, letter-openers, informers and agents provocateurs that he no longer makes any serious protest.

In other words, make them hear you.

And if they won’t listen, then I suggest it’s time for what Martin Luther King Jr. called for when government doesn’t listen: “militant nonviolent resistance.”

Baltimore — Charges against a Maryland man who has been sitting in jail since January have been dropped after video surfaced of a cop falsifying evidence in the case, it was reported Wednesday. From the Baltimore Sun:

“Baltimore police and prosecutors have launched investigations after being alerted to body camera footage that the public defender’s office says shows an officer planting drugs.

“The footage is from a January drug arrest. It shows an officer placing a soup can, which holds a plastic bag, into a trash-strewn lot. The officer can then be seen walking to the street, where he flips on his body camera.”

The cop then reenters the lot and pretends to find the can, out of which he pulls the bag full of white capsules. But the officer was apparently unaware that body cameras have a feature that records 30 seconds of video, without audio, before the camera is activated, and it’s that silent half-minute that has him in hot water.

“We take allegations like this very seriously and that’s why we launched an internal investigation into the accusations,” police department spokesman T.J. Smith told the Sun. “We are fortunate to have body-worn cameras which provide a perspective of the event.”

Not so fortunate is the unidentified man who’s been locked up for the last six months based on planted evidence. His bail had been set at $50,000, an amount he couldn’t pay. Immediately after the public defender’s office alerted prosecutors to the footage, all charges against the man were dropped.

A spokesperson for Baltimore’s state attorney’s office, Melba Saunders, called the video “troubling” and said the prosecutor in charge of the case “took immediate and appropriate actions by dropping the case and alerting his supervisor.”

The internal affairs division of the Baltimore Police Department is conducting an investigation into the officer in question.

A reverse buy bust appears to be in the works for the Albuquerque Police Department, but the details of how they plan to go about catching low-level drug users — by becoming crack cocaine manufacturers — signifies everything inherently corrupt about the U.S.’ war on drugs.

Burque Mediaexclusively revealed APD’s intentions to become temporary crack manufacturers, after a confidential source shared the affidavit about the impending bust.

“Powdered cocaine may be taken into APD’s Criminalistics Unit to be made into crack cocaine,” reads the Affidavit and Motion to Release Evidence, dated February 25, 2016, and signed by a District Court Judge. In addition to the police-manufactured crack, APD is also permitted to use methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin from its cataloged evidence stores to become drug dealers in order to catch individuals who use those illegal substances.

“Once the transaction is completed,” the document continues, “the individual purchasing the drugs will be arrested and charged with Felony Possession of a Controlled Substance. The detectives will attempt to immediately retrieve the drugs sold.”

While high-level, volume-transporting, and sometimes violent drug dealers — created by the illegality of such substances in the State’s failed drug war — won’t be the target of this bust, small-time users will be entrapped by police con-artists and have their lives upended with serious charges. Police, in such a dual operation, become perpetrators of the very problem they claim to be combating — to catch individuals whose only harm is to their own person.

According to Burque Media’s source, police initiated the reverse sting operation, which will run through the end of 2016, pursuant to complaints from area businesses and residents.

“The business[es], residents, and patrons have complained about drug dealing throughout the City of Albuquerque,” claims the affidavit. “Citizens have contacted Detectives complaining about being asked, by people walking/driving through the City of Albuquerque, if they wanted to purchase drugs.”

“Law enforcement has tried many methods and has been unable to effectively stop the supply of drugs to the street dealers and users in these areas,” the document states. “These methods include but are not limited too [sic] successfully purchasing drugs from drug dealers in the area […]

“It is believed that taking enforcement action against the purchasers of drugs in these areas, if well known, would reduce the demand for drugs in the City of Albuquerque.”

Obviously, Albuquerque isn’t looking to Portugal, where all drugs have been decriminalized to enormous success — including across-the-board drops in both usage and addiction rates — for a model to combat, ironically, issues stemming from America’s drug war. When an open and legal market exists for those who choose to use, and includes ease of obtaining help from treatment centers when necessary, residents and businesses wouldn’t be pestered by addicts on the street.

In fact, APD’s plans are troubling, even for insiders.

“This is a practice I have frowned upon because of the use of seized drugs already tagged into evidence, and I have not seen it for some time,” explained Pete Dinelli, former Chief Deputy District Attorney and former Chief Public Safety Officer, who doubted the veracity of the APD’s plans until the affidavit was filed in court. “It’s downright dangerous to be using drugs seized in other drug busts because of chain-of-custody issues and the risk associated with not being able to track what happens. The city could also be exposed to liability for using tainted drugs that they lose track of.”

Dinelli’s concerns may be justified. As if supplementing the use of logged drug evidence with police-made crack weren’t bad enough, the affidavit points to awareness the APD likely will lose some of its product over the course of the sting.

“Any drugs not used in this operation will be returned to the Albuquerque Police Department’s Evidence Unit,” the document concludes.

As Dinelli summarized of the whole operation, “This is a very poor law enforcement practice.”

When even the cops are manufacturing crack, you know the war on drugs is nothing short of a farce.

The good old days of the 60s – where hippies came to escape society and grow cannabis for a west coast population steeped in peace, love and mind expansion – have taken a turn for the worse.

It is still home to virtuous people making a living and respecting human rights and the environment. However, the Emerald Triangle has unfortunately been tarnished by the presence of psychopaths and police preying on the populace.

Walter relays the tales of female “trimmigrants” who trim cannabis buds during the June-to-November harvest. Some of them attend Humboldt State University, and others are attracted from farther away with the promise of good money to be made.

The investigation reveals a disturbing reality where some owners of pot farms, which are often located far from any town, force their trimmigrant workers into sex and sometimes don’t even pay them for work. One teenage trimmer described being locked in an oversized toolbox with breathing holes if she threatened to run away.

The problem is not that they are working in the cannabis industry, but the fact that government prohibition is perpetuating it as a black market — allowing for society’s worst to flourish.

Federal government still classifies cannabis as a Schedule 1 drug – the most restrictive form of prohibition – and California has yet to legalize its recreational use. The state legalized medical cannabis in 1996, which fueled an explosive growth of cannabis farming in the Emerald Triangle, but the half-baked effort at decriminalization has brought little change to the region. Instead, greed prompted some unscrupulous players to seize on the obscurity of the black market.

Just as astonishing as the rise in sexual exploitation and the number of girls who go missing, is the stance of law enforcement. Rather than devote their resources to solving the real crimes of underage sex trafficking and slavery, cops focus on raiding grow operations – legal or not – to seize cash and assets for financial gain.

“Despite evidence of a growing problem, law enforcement has put few resources into investigations of trafficking and sexual exploitation. Instead, police have conducted stings targeting prostitutes and sometimes their pimps. And the Eureka police chief recently posed as a grower online to attract trimmers, only to warn them not to come…

Marijuana raids also have become a large source of revenue for local law enforcement agencies. During raids, officers have confiscated not just harvests, but also money, guns and even farming equipment.

Humboldt County law enforcement agencies made 100 seizures of property and funds last year, including from farmers who had legal permission to grow. The value of the assets totaled more than $2 million – more per capita than was pulled from the state’s 15 most populous counties combined, state data shows. Mendocino County’s marijuana eradication team receives a finder’s fee from a pool of seized funds for every case it initiates, in addition to a nearly 50 percent cut of any confiscated funds.

The result is tantamount to tunnel vision, said Kyla Baxley, the district attorney’s office investigator. “They’re going in to eradicate marijuana, and they would probably tell you nothing else is happening but the drugs.”

That perspective seems to pervade law enforcement agencies across the Emerald Triangle.”

Part of the problem is that trimmigrants working at an illegal grow operation are very reluctant to call police, if they can even manage to get a line of communication. Calling the cops may rule out future jobs, too.

One teen started working for a grower when she was 12, and was “passed around” to pay off the grower’s debts. She ran away to a youth homeless shelter, which turned out to be a hunting ground for pimps as many other vulnerable girls also worked on cannabis farms.

Such is the legacy of the black market created and perpetuated by government prohibition. The cannabis industry that was born in the Emerald Triangle – to meet the demand for this plant that humans have enjoyed and benefited from for thousands of years – grew during the era of prohibition.

Instead of developing like any other industry, such as the legal drug alcohol, northern California cannabis farming evolved underground. And that brought with it the scourge of unscrupulous growers preying on other human beings; growers who’ve become experts at hiding their misdeeds along with their grow operations.

Thanks to the war on drugs, “policing for profit” now takes priority over stopping the underground sex trafficking and slavery ring.

As we witness the development of the cannabis industry in states that have fully legalized the plant, nowhere do we hear about sexual exploitation, slavery, and missing persons. Operating in the light of day tends to promote a fair and just way of doing business.

Alongside these miscreant growers in the Emerald Triangle who abuse girls, are the cops exploiting prohibition by raiding cannabis farms for profit. Instead of acknowledging that supply will never be curtailed, and diverting their resources to real crimes of sexual exploitation and slavery, police departments are content to take their own cut from the trade.